Ezekiel 16:43 | |
43. Because you has not remembered the days of thy youth, but has fretted me in all these things; behold, therefore I also will recompense thy way upon your head, says the Lord God: and you shall not commit this lewdness above all your abominations. | 43. Quia1 non es recordata dierum adolescentiae tuae, et irritasti me in hoc toto2etiam ego viam tuam in caput reddam,3 dicit Dominator Iehovah: et non fecisti cogitationem super cunctis abominationibus tuis.4 |
He first blames the Jews for not reflecting on the liberality of their treatment. But that ingratitude was too shameful, since God had not omitted any kind of beneficence for their ornament. But since they thought themselves not adorned with sufficient splendor by God, and that he was less munificent than he ought to be, it may here be gathered that they were unworthy of such great and remarkable benefits. Finally, God here shows that how severely soever he punished the Jews, yet they deserved it for their ingratitude in not thinking him sufficiently liberal towards them: for their spirits were utterly broken. If a wife leave her husband, she is either compelled to do so by his perverse conduct, or else she betrays an illiberal disposition if she has been treated honorably. But since the Jews were bound to God so strongly in so many ways, their perfidy and revolt was so much the more detestable; for God does not suffer his blessings to be despised by us: since we must always mark the reason of his omitting nothing which may testify his paternal love towards us, namely, that we may celebrate his goodness. But when we turn his benefits to the profanation of his name, that is like mingling heaven and earth. Hence this passage against ingratitude must be remarked.
He now adds, thou, has been tumultuous against me, or has moved or irritated me.
1 "Because." -- Calvin.
2 Or, "you have been tumultuous against me." -- Calvin.
3 " I will put." -- Calvin.
4 Others translate, "that you may not execute thy thought in all your abominations." Jerome reads it in the first person, and translates it thus: "I have not fulfilled my thought according to your abominations," as if God would praise his own clemency here in being so moderate in his wrath; but this is altogether foreign to the subject. -- Calvin.
5 We must understand the pronoun " thy" before "head." -- Calvin.